FP: The
U.S. government recently designated the infamous Saudi Al-Haramain
Islamic Foundation as a terror financier. Tell us about Al Haramain.
Alexiev: Well, there is a lot to
tell and a lot has been written about it already in the
counterterrorism blog and elsewhere for those who want more detailed
information. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission had a separate case study dedicated to it, but here it is in a nutshell:
The Al -Haramain Islamic Foundation
(AHIF) is one of the three largest Saudi front organizations active in
the support of terrorism going back many years, and has been involved
in the funding of Al Qaeda, the bombing of the American embassies in
Africa and all manner of jihadist activities in Pakistan, the Balkans,
Chechnia, Kashmir and elsewhere. But it will be a mistake to think of
it simply as a terrorism enabler. It is even more important as a key
player in funding and promoting the hateful Wahhabi/Salafi creed and
the seditious shariah doctrine worldwide including in the United
States.
Here are just a few figures that will
give you a sense of the magnitude of these efforts. Before we moved
against it, it had 50 offices around the world and operated out of
Saudi embassies in another 40 countries. An official Saudi source
claimed in December 2000 that it had built 1100 mosques and Islamic
centers, employed 3000 proselytizers and published 13 million Islamic
books.
And the most important thing about it
is that contrary to countless Saudi denials, AHIF is a Saudi
state-sponsored, funded and run organization. In other words, whatever
it did was Saudi state policy. This is a reality that our government
refuses to acknowledge even when it tries to do something about it, as,
for instance, when it designated as terrorist two offices of AHIF in
March of 2002, even as it labeled it misleadingly as “private,
charitable and educational.”
It is important to document this
briefly, because the Saudis continue to lie blatantly about their
sponsorship of this and other subversive ‘charities.’ The reason AHIF
operated out of Saudi embassies in many countries, as mentioned, is
because it is directly subordinated to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs,
which maintains sizable sections in most of these embassies. Indeed,
the minister of Islamic affairs is always the chairman of AHIF’s
highest organ, the Administrative Council, ex-officio. This is admitted
even by Al-Haramain officials, such as the top guy in the closed AHIF
office in Ashland, Oregon, Al-Buthe, who called the Islamic Affairs
Ministry the “patron” of AHIF.
It is also the case that
Al-Haramain and the other key Saudi fronts derive most of their funding
directly from state coffers. For example, in November of 2002, nearly
eight months after the kingdom allegedly agreed to close down two
branches of AHIF in conjunction with the U.S., a Saudi newspaper
reported on a fundraising meeting for Al-Haramain and others in the
presence of then-Crown Prince Abdullah and other Saudi bigwigs, at
which it was reported that the Saudi government covers 80% of the
charities’ total expenditures, as well as 80% of the cost of building
their headquarters.
By the way, Jamie, if you know how
their ‘private’ fund raising is organized, you’d realize that it’s
private in name only. Here is how it’s done. A powerful member of the
House of Saud sets up and chairs a fund raiser at which moneyed
interests are invited and urges the assembled to support the noble
efforts of whatever ‘charity’ is involved and writes a fat check
himself. It is an invitation that few can afford not to follow in a
country where the economic well-being of the elite depends on whether
or not they’re in the good graces of the royal family.
FP: Are there any other Saudi organizations that deserve to be designated?
Alexiev: Of course, I have
followed about a dozen myself and there are hundreds of others I know
very little about. All told, Saudi sources speak of anywhere between
240 and 265 Islamic charities active in the Kingdom and outside of it.
The largest and most active in
terrorism funding and spreading hate against us, apart from
Al-Haramain, are the Muslim World League (MWL) and the World Assembly
of Muslim Youth (WAMY). A fourth large and active terror enabler,
called the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is actually
a department of MWL and should not be considered a separate
organization.
Just like AHIF, all of them are both
documented supporters of terrorist activities and Saudi state-sponsored
entities that should have been designated and closed down years ago.
The MWL, for instance, through a subsidiary in Pakistan called the
Rabita Trust, played an indispensible role in the founding of Al Qaeda.
The fact that we have allowed these outfits to engage in open
subversion against us with complete impugnity is a graphic example of
our failure to even acknowledge who our real enemies are in this war.
FP: What do you think of the U.S. move on Al Haramain? Why so late and why unilaterally? What does this mean for the war on terror?
Alexiev: Well, moving to close
down Al-Haramain is, of course, a positive step, but in my view it’s
also a case of too little too late and serves to demonstrate the
abysmal failure of this administration to fess up to the fact that our
‘strategic ally’ Saudi Arabia is a sworn enemy of the United States.
Let’s not forget that we’re nearing the 7th anniversary of
9/11and it has been more than six years after our first timid effort to
curtail the subversive activities of AHIF in March of 2002. During all
this time we did nothing except very meekly try to talk the Saudis into
cooperation. The modus operandi of this administration vis a vis the
Saudis seems to be “speak softly and carry no stick.”
Yet, it was clear very early on that
they had no intention to do anything but play us for a sucker. Not only
did they refuse to do anything, but they actually told us off
repeatedly in fairly direct and insulting terms. For instance, in
September 2002, Aqeel al-Aqeel, the chairman of Al-Haramain and a man
who’s alleged to have personally smuggled millions of dollars to
terrorist groups, boasted in the Saudi press that “America has tried to
establish a link between terrorism and Saudi charitable societies and
failed,” while an official Saudi media organ claimed that the charges
leveled against Saudi charities like Al-Haramain by the U.S. Treasury
were “politically motivated and orchestrated by Christian
neo-conservatives and their Zionist allies.”
The reason this long overdue step was
finally unilaterally is probably due to the fact that the evidence of
Al-Haramain’s misdeeds is and has been for a long time
incontrovertible. It could also be the case that the USG people
involved became worried that when the evidence eventually sees the
light of day after the Bush Administration is gone, as it inevitable
will, it will look like they were either extraordinarily incompetent or
else went to extraordinary lengths to protect the Saudis. Either way,
there is no doubt that questions will be asked.
FP: Does this mean that Washington is finally taking a tougher stance toward Riyadh?
Alexiev: I wish I could believe that, but frankly I can’t. There is just too much evidence that vested interests in Washington were keen on shielding the Saudis from having to account for their misdeeds.
FP: Can you give us some examples of how the
Bush administration has shielded the Saudis? Some critics have alleged
that even the findings of the 9/11 commission were politically
interfered with to whitewash Saudi involvement. Any truth to that?
Alexiev: I firmly believe that
the 9/11 Commission did a pitiful job of explaining to the American
people what actually happened and its greatest failure by far was its
conclusion that the Saudis had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and 9/11. If
you look at what the Saudis do when accused of enabling terrorism, as
for example in an ongoing lawsuit against them in Philladelphia, they
invariably use this 9/11 Commission finding as their key defense. Yet,
anybody that is half-way familiar with how Al-Qaeda came into being and
with the involvement of Saudi charities like the ones discussed above
and key players like Wael Julaidan, Adil Batterji and the Golden Chain
characters would have to consider such a conclusion as bordering on
outright disinformation. Especially because some of the USG information
available to the commission and footnoted in the report, like the USG
Evidentiary Proffer in the Enaam Arnout/Benevolence International case,
simply precludes such a conclusion.
Now, I’m not the first to suspect
political interference with the 9/11 Report and former democratic
Senator Graham, who was a co-chair of the Congressional Joint-Inquiry
Commission, among others, is on record with direct accusations against
the Bush Administration along these lines. In the meantime, new
information has come to light that makes such suspicions ever more
justified. A while ago, a Czech translator, of all people, was able to
get the FBI timeline on which the 9/11 Commission report was based
released through the Freedom of Information Act. In a direct
contradiction to the 9/11 Report, the timeline claims that the two
Saudi highjackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, were picked up
in L.A. by a suspected Saudi agent named Omar al-Bayoumi and stayed
with him in San Diego from the moment they arrived. This directly
contradicts the 9/11 report which claims that they spent two weeks in
L.A. and eventually bumped into Bayoumi by sheer chance. If the former
is the truth, as the FBI Timeline and all available evidence confirms,
the highjackers had a well organized Saudi-run support system waiting
for them the minute they came to America. By the way, telephone logs
show that during the time he hosted the terrorists, Bayoumi made
hundreds of calls to the Saudi embassy in D.C. and Saudi consulates in
California. What do you think they discussed; the weather in San Diego?
There is yet another more than curious
tidbit that ties into this. The minute Bayoumi started taking care of
the eventual suicide pilots, his monthly retainer from a company in
Saudi Arabia for which he did no work, more than doubled and he also
started receiving money indirectly from the wife of the illustrious
Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar. The fact that the 9/11 Report did not
dwell on this speaks for itself. This is the kind of stuff that makes
people believe in conspiracies.
FP: You have written and
testified to Congress that you consider Saudi Arabia to be the main
state sponsor and financial enabler of radical Sunni Islam, while the
U.S. government considers it a "strategic ally." Can you provide some
evidence to back up your claim?
Alexiev: This is a fairly
time-consuming exercise but let me just say this. Since 1973, Saudi
Arabia has spent no less than $100 billion trying to undermine the West
by promoting radical Islamism and hatred against our values and way of
life. It has succeeded in dominating most of the Muslim establishment
in Europe and America and imposing its hateful views on a large section
of the Muslim population and dominating most of what passes as the
Muslim establishment in this country. Most of our officials are
clueless of this state of affairs, even in places like the Pentagon and
Homeland Security, to say nothing of the FBI, and, more often than not,
get their advice on matters Muslim from radical Islamist organizations
like CAIR, ISNA, MAS, MSA etc. In fact, it has now gotten to the point
where the FBI is asking CAIR, an organization which has a number of its
high officials in jail for terrorist activities, to provide Islamic
sensitivity training to their agents. The malignant political
correctness and multicultural inanities that rule the land nowadays
certainly have something to do with it, but the Bush Administration
must share much of the responsibility for this dismal state of affairs.
